About Us

The contributors to the Consumer Law & Policy blog are lawyers and law professors who
practice, teach, or write about consumer law and policy. The blog is hosted by Public
Citizen's Consumer Justice Project, but the views expressed here are solely those of the individual contributors (and don't necessarily
reflect the views of institutions with which they are affiliated). To view the blog's policies, please click here.

Monday, February 04, 2013

Feds Issue Final Rule Requiring Drug Companies to Submit Data on Perks They Give to Doctors and Hospitals

by Brian Wolfman

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued this final rule that will require manufacturers of drugs, biologics, medical devices, and certain other medical products to report annually to the Secretary of HHS about the payments the manufacturers make to doctors and hospitals. The Secretary is then required to make the information available on a public website. The manufacturers must collect the data by August of this year and submit it to CMS by April 2014. The government website should be up and running by September 2014. A variety of perks must be reported, including speaking fees, consulting payments, research, gifts, food, entertainment, honoraria, research grants, royalties, and license fees.

In the meantime, ProPublica has been making some of this information public on its website, Dollars for Docs, with this explanation:

Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make
to doctors and other health professionals for promoting their drugs. But
12 companies have begun publicizing the information, some because of
legal settlements. ProPublica pulled their disclosures into a database
so patients can search for their doctor. Accepting payments isn’t
necessarily wrong, but it can raise ethical issues.